The competition was launched in August to highlight the potential for new technologies to enhance trade finance mechanisms. Winners were selected from 103 technology solutions submitted by applicants worldwide to three problem statements: Connecting Digital Islands and Increasing Network Size and Effects; Trade Finance Inclusion for SMEs; and TradeTech for Emerging Markets.

The winners, including runners-up, in alphabetical order, are: Business Big Data Inc., eCOM Asia Ltd., EMALI.IO Ltd., essDOCS Ltd., Forms Syntron Information (HK) Ltd., FreightAmigo Services Ltd., HashKey Group, iLoan, KYC-Chain Ltd., Linklogis International Company Ltd., OneConnect Financial Technology Co., Ltd., PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting Hong Kong Ltd., Refinitiv Hong Kong Ltd., Standard Chartered and University of Hong Kong-SCF FinTech Academy, Sedicii Innovations Ltd., Velotrade Management Ltd. and WeBank Co., Ltd.

All have been invited to showcase their submissions at the Hong Kong Fintech Week, which will run as a virtual event on 2-6 November. More details about the winners and all shortlisted participants the technology solutions they propose can be viewed here.

Receiving innovative tech solutions from companies based all over the world shows that technology has significant potential to improve trade finance processes, ranging from very large institutional trade finance to SMEs at the grassroots level. We look forward to seeing further development of the proposals and new prototypes in the months ahead.
Benoît Cœuré, Head of the BISIH

The HKMA is pleased to have received an enthusiastic response even amid the pandemic and is impressed by the quality of the submissions. We believe that the winning proposals, when further developed, hold great potential for addressing some long-standing pain points of the global trade finance business. We look forward to the next steps and continuing our close collaboration with the BISIH.
Edmond Lau, Senior Executive Director of the HKMA

TechChallenge was supported by judges from the Asian Development Bank, the Global Shipping Business Network, the Institute of International Finance, the International Chamber of Commerce, Oxford University, the People's Bank of China, the Trade Finance Global (TFG), the TradeLens, the Trade IX & the Marco Polo Network, the Wolfsberg Group, the World Economic Forum and the World Trade Organization.